91:0.1 PRAYER, as an agency of religion, evolved
from previous nonreligious monologue and dialogue expressions. With the
attainment of self-consciousness by primitive man there occurred the
inevitable corollary of other-consciousness, the dual potential of social
response and God recognition.

91:0.2 The earliest prayer forms were not addressed
to Deity. These expressions were much like what you would say to a friend as
you entered upon some important undertaking, "Wish me luck." Primitive man was
enslaved to magic; luck, good and bad, entered into all the affairs of life.
At first, these luck petitions were monologues -- just a kind of thinking out
loud by the magic server. Next, these believers in luck would enlist the
support of their friends and families, and presently some form of ceremony
would be performed which included the whole clan or tribe.

91:0.3 When the concepts of ghosts and spirits
evolved, these petitions became superhuman in address, and with the
consciousness of gods, such expressions attained to the levels of genuine
prayer. As an illustration of this, among certain Australian tribes primitive
religious prayers antedated their belief in spirits and superhuman
personalities.

91:0.4 The Toda tribe of India now observes this
practice of praying to no one in particular, just as did the early peoples
before the times of religious consciousness. Only, among the Todas, this
represents a regression of their degenerating religion to this primitive
level. The present-day rituals of the dairymen priests of the Todas do not
represent a religious ceremony since these impersonal prayers do not
contribute anything to the conservation or enhancement of any social, moral,
or spiritual values.

91:0.5 Prereligious praying was part of the mana
practices of the Melanesians, the oudah beliefs of the African Pygmies, and
the manitou superstitions of the North American Indians. The Baganda tribes of
Africa have only recently emerged from the mana level of prayer. In this early
evolutionary confusion men pray to gods -- local and national -- to fetishes,
amulets, ghosts, rulers, and to ordinary people.

1. PRIMITIVE PRAYER

91:1.1 The function of early evolutionary religion
is to conserve and augment the essential social, moral, and spiritual values
which are slowly taking form. This mission of religion is not consciously
observed by mankind, but it is chiefly effected by the function of prayer. The
practice of prayer represents the unintended, but nonetheless personal and
collective, effort of any group to secure (to actualize) this conservation of
higher values. But for the safeguarding of prayer, all holy days would
speedily revert to the status of mere holidays.

91:1.2 Religion and its agencies, the chief of which
is prayer, are allied only with those values which have general social
recognition, group approval. Therefore, when primitive man attempted to
gratify his baser emotions or to achieve unmitigated selfish ambitions, he was
deprived of the consolation of religion and the assistance of prayer. If the
individual sought to accomplish anything antisocial, he was obliged to seek
the aid of nonreligious magic, resort to sorcerers, and thus be deprived of
the assistance of prayer. Prayer, therefore, very early became a mighty
promoter of social evolution, moral progress, and spiritual
attainment.

91:1.3 But the primitive mind was neither logical
nor consistent. Early men did not perceive that material things were not the
province of prayer. These simple-minded souls reasoned that food, shelter,
rain, game, and other material goods enhanced the social welfare, and
therefore they began to pray for these physical blessings. While this
constituted a perversion of prayer, it encouraged the effort to realize these
material objectives by social and ethical actions. Such a prostitution of
prayer, while debasing the spiritual values of a people, nevertheless directly
elevated their economic, social, and ethical mores.

91:1.4 Prayer is only monologuous in the most
primitive type of mind. It early becomes a dialogue and rapidly expands to the
level of group worship. Prayer signifies that the premagical incantations of
primitive religion have evolved to that level where the human mind recognizes
the reality of beneficent powers or beings who are able to enhance social
values and to augment moral ideals, and further, that these influences are
superhuman and distinct from the ego of the self-conscious human and his
fellow mortals. True prayer does not, therefore, appear until the agency of
religious ministry is visualized as personal.

91:1.5 Prayer is little associated with animism, but
such beliefs may exist alongside emerging religious sentiments. Many times,
religion and animism have had entirely separate origins.

91:1.6 With those mortals who have not been
delivered from the primitive bondage of fear, there is a real danger that all
prayer may lead to a morbid sense of sin, unjustified convictions of guilt,
real or fancied. But in modern times it is not likely that many will spend
sufficient time at prayer to lead to this harmful brooding over their
unworthiness or sinfulness. The dangers attendant upon the distortion and
perversion of prayer consist in ignorance, superstition, crystallization,
devitalization, materialism, and fanaticism.

2. EVOLVING PRAYER

91:2.1 The first prayers were merely verbalized
wishes, the expression of sincere desires. Prayer next became a technique of
achieving spirit co-operation. And then it attained to the higher function of
assisting religion in the conservation of all worth-while values.

91:2.2 Both prayer and magic arose as a result of
man's adjustive reactions to Urantian environment. But aside from this
generalized relationship, they have little in common. Prayer has always
indicated positive action by the praying ego; it has been always psychic and
sometimes spiritual. Magic has usually signified an attempt to manipulate
reality without affecting the ego of the manipulator, the practitioner of
magic. Despite their independent origins, magic and prayer often have been
interrelated in their later stages of development. Magic has sometimes
ascended by goal elevation from formulas through rituals and incantations to
the threshold of true prayer. Prayer has sometimes become so materialistic
that it has degenerated into a pseudomagical technique of avoiding the
expenditure of that effort which is requisite for the solution of Urantian
problems.

91:2.3 When man learned that prayer could not coerce
the gods, then it became more of a petition, favor seeking. But the truest
prayer is in reality a communion between man and his Maker.

91:2.4 The appearance of the sacrifice idea in any
religion unfailingly detracts from the higher efficacy of true prayer in that
men seek to substitute the offerings of material possessions for the offering
of their own consecrated wills to the doing of the will of God.

91:2.5 When religion is divested of a personal God,
its prayers translate to the levels of theology and philosophy. When the
highest God concept of a religion is that of an impersonal Deity, such as in
pantheistic idealism, although affording the basis for certain forms of mystic
communion, it proves fatal to the potency of true prayer, which always stands
for man's communion with a personal and superior being.

91:2.6 During the earlier times of racial evolution
and even at the present time, in the day-by-day experience of the average
mortal, prayer is very much a phenomenon of man's intercourse with his own
subconscious. But there is also a domain of prayer wherein the intellectually
alert and spiritually progressing individual attains more or less contact with
the superconscious levels of the human mind, the domain of the indwelling
Thought Adjuster. In addition, there is a definite spiritual phase of true
prayer which concerns its reception and recognition by the spiritual forces of
the universe, and which is entirely distinct from all human and intellectual
association.

91:2.7 Prayer contributes greatly to the development
of the religious sentiment of an evolving human mind. It is a mighty influence
working to prevent isolation of personality.

91:2.8 Prayer represents one technique associated
with the natural religions of racial evolution which also forms a part of the
experiential values of the higher religions of ethical excellence, the
religions of revelation.

3. PRAYER AND THE ALTER EGO

91:3.1 Children, when first learning to make use of
language, are prone to think out loud, to express their thoughts in words,
even if no one is present to hear them. With the dawn of creative imagination
they evince a tendency to converse with imaginary companions. In this way a
budding ego seeks to hold communion with a fictitious alter ego. By
this technique the child early learns to convert his monologue conversations
into pseudo dialogues in which this alter ego makes replies to his verbal
thinking and wish expression. Very much of an adult's thinking is mentally
carried on in conversational form.

91:3.2 The early and primitive form of prayer was
much like the semimagical recitations of the present-day Toda tribe, prayers
that were not addressed to anyone in particular. But such techniques of
praying tend to evolve into the dialogue type of communication by the
emergence of the idea of an alter ego. In time the alter-ego concept is
exalted to a superior status of divine dignity, and prayer as an agency of
religion has appeared. Through many phases and during long ages this primitive
type of praying is destined to evolve before attaining the level of
intelligent and truly ethical prayer.

91:3.3 As it is conceived by successive generations
of praying mortals, the alter ego evolves up through ghosts, fetishes, and
spirits to polytheistic gods, and eventually to the One God, a divine being
embodying the highest ideals and the loftiest aspirations of the praying ego.
And thus does prayer function as the most potent agency of religion in the
conservation of the highest values and ideals of those who pray. From the
moment of the conceiving of an alter ego to the appearance of the concept of a
divine and heavenly Father, prayer is always a socializing, moralizing, and
spiritualizing practice.

91:3.4 The simple prayer of faith evidences a mighty
evolution in human experience whereby the ancient conversations with the
fictitious symbol of the alter ego of primitive religion have become exalted
to the level of communion with the spirit of the Infinite and to that of a
bona fide consciousness of the reality of the eternal God and Paradise Father
of all intelligent creation.

91:3.5 Aside from all that is superself in the
experience of praying, it should be remembered that ethical prayer is a
splendid way to elevate one's ego and reinforce the self for better living and
higher attainment. Prayer induces the human ego to look both ways for help:
for material aid to the subconscious reservoir of mortal experience, for
inspiration and guidance to the superconscious borders of the contact of the
material with the spiritual, with the Mystery Monitor.

91:3.6 Prayer ever has been and ever will be a
twofold human experience: a psychologic procedure interassociated with a
spiritual technique. And these two functions of prayer can never be fully
separated.

91:3.7 Enlightened prayer must recognize not only an
external and personal God but also an internal and impersonal Divinity, the
indwelling Adjuster. It is altogether fitting that man, when he prays, should
strive to grasp the concept of the Universal Father on Paradise; but the more
effective technique for most practical purposes will be to revert to the
concept of a near-by alter ego, just as the primitive mind was wont to do, and
then to recognize that the idea of this alter ego has evolved from a mere
fiction to the truth of God's indwelling mortal man in the factual presence of
the Adjuster so that man can talk face to face, as it were, with a real and
genuine and divine alter ego that indwells him and is the very presence and
essence of the living God, the Universal Father.

4. ETHICAL PRAYING

91:4.1 No prayer can be ethical when the petitioner
seeks for selfish advantage over his fellows. Selfish and materialistic
praying is incompatible with the ethical religions which are predicated on
unselfish and divine love. All such unethical praying reverts to the primitive
levels of pseudo magic and is unworthy of advancing civilizations and
enlightened religions. Selfish praying transgresses the spirit of all ethics
founded on loving justice.

91:4.2 Prayer must never be so prostituted as to
become a substitute for action. All ethical prayer is a stimulus to action and
a guide to the progressive striving for idealistic goals of
superself-attainment.

91:4.3 In all your praying be fair; do not
expect God to show partiality, to love you more than his other children, your
friends, neighbors, even enemies. But the prayer of the natural or evolved
religions is not at first ethical, as it is in the later revealed religions.
All praying, whether individual or communal, may be either egoistic or
altruistic. That is, the prayer may be centered upon the self or upon others.
When the prayer seeks nothing for the one who prays nor anything for his
fellows, then such attitudes of the soul tend to the levels of true worship.
Egoistic prayers involve confessions and petitions and often consist in
requests for material favors. Prayer is somewhat more ethical when it deals
with forgiveness and seeks wisdom for enhanced self-control.

91:4.4 While the nonselfish type of prayer is
strengthening and comforting, materialistic praying is destined to bring
disappointment and disillusionment as advancing scientific discoveries
demonstrate that man lives in a physical universe of law and order. The
childhood of an individual or a race is characterized by primitive, selfish,
and materialistic praying. And, to a certain extent, all such petitions are
efficacious in that they unvaryingly lead to those efforts and exertions which
are contributory to achieving the answers to such prayers. The real prayer of
faith always contributes to the augmentation of the technique of living, even
if such petitions are not worthy of spiritual recognition. But the spiritually
advanced person should exercise great caution in attempting to discourage the
primitive or immature mind regarding such prayers.

91:4.5 Remember, even if prayer does not change God,
it very often effects great and lasting changes in the one who prays in faith
and confident expectation. Prayer has been the ancestor of much peace of mind,
cheerfulness, calmness, courage, self-mastery, and fair-mindedness in the men
and women of the evolving races.

5. SOCIAL REPERCUSSIONS OF PRAYER

91:5.1 In ancestor worship, prayer leads to the
cultivation of ancestral ideals. But prayer, as a feature of Deity worship,
transcends all other such practices since it leads to the cultivation of
divine ideals. As the concept of the alter ego of prayer becomes supreme and
divine, so are man's ideals accordingly elevated from mere human toward
supernal and divine levels, and the result of all such praying is the
enhancement of human character and the profound unification of human
personality.

91:5.2 But prayer need not always be individual.
Group or congregational praying is very effective in that it is highly
socializing in its repercussions. When a group engages in community prayer for
moral enhancement and spiritual uplift, such devotions are reactive upon the
individuals composing the group; they are all made better because of
participation. Even a whole city or an entire nation can be helped by such
prayer devotions. Confession, repentance, and prayer have led individuals,
cities, nations, and whole races to mighty efforts of reform and courageous
deeds of valorous achievement.

91:5.3 If you truly desire to overcome the habit of
criticizing some friend, the quickest and surest way of achieving such a
change of attitude is to establish the habit of praying for that person every
day of your life. But the social repercussions of such prayers are dependent
largely on two conditions:

91:5.4 1. The person who is prayed for should know
that he is being prayed for.

91:5.5 2. The person who prays should come into
intimate social contact with the person for whom he is praying.

91:5.6 Prayer is the technique whereby, sooner or
later, every religion becomes institutionalized. And in time prayer becomes
associated with numerous secondary agencies, some helpful, others decidedly
deleterious, such as priests, holy books, worship rituals, and
ceremonials.

91:5.7 But the minds of greater spiritual
illumination should be patient with, and tolerant of, those less endowed
intellects that crave symbolism for the mobilization of their feeble spiritual
insight. The strong must not look with disdain upon the weak. Those who are
God-conscious without symbolism must not deny the grace-ministry of the symbol
to those who find it difficult to worship Deity and to revere truth, beauty,
and goodness without form and ritual. In prayerful worship, most mortals
envision some symbol of the object-goal of their devotions.

6. THE PROVINCE OF PRAYER

91:6.1 Prayer, unless in liaison with the will and
actions of the personal spiritual forces and material supervisors of a realm,
can have no direct effect upon one's physical environment. While there is a
very definite limit to the province of the petitions of prayer, such limits do
not equally apply to the faith of those who pray.

91:6.2 Prayer is not a technique for curing real and
organic diseases, but it has contributed enormously to the enjoyment of
abundant health and to the cure of numerous mental, emotional, and nervous
ailments. And even in actual bacterial disease, prayer has many times added to
the efficacy of other remedial procedures. Prayer has turned many an irritable
and complaining invalid into a paragon of patience and made him an inspiration
to all other human sufferers.

91:6.3 No matter how difficult it may be to
reconcile the scientific doubtings regarding the efficacy of prayer with the
ever-present urge to seek help and guidance from divine sources, never forget
that the sincere prayer of faith is a mighty force for the promotion of
personal happiness, individual self-control, social harmony, moral progress,
and spiritual attainment.

91:6.4 Prayer, even as a purely human practice, a
dialogue with one's alter ego, constitutes a technique of the most efficient
approach to the realization of those reserve powers of human nature which are
stored and conserved in the unconscious realms of the human mind. Prayer is a
sound psychologic practice, aside from its religious implications and its
spiritual significance. It is a fact of human experience that most persons, if
sufficiently hard pressed, will pray in some way to some source of help.

91:6.5 Do not be so slothful as to ask God to solve
your difficulties, but never hesitate to ask him for wisdom and spiritual
strength to guide and sustain you while you yourself resolutely and
courageously attack the problems at hand.

91:6.6 Prayer has been an indispensable factor in
the progress and preservation of religious civilization, and it still has
mighty contributions to make to the further enhancement and spiritualization
of society if those who pray will only do so in the light of scientific facts,
philosophic wisdom, intellectual sincerity, and spiritual faith. Pray as Jesus
taught his disciples -- honestly, unselfishly, with fairness, and without
doubting.

91:6.7 But the efficacy of prayer in the personal
spiritual experience of the one who prays is in no way dependent on such a
worshiper's intellectual understanding, philosophic acumen, social level,
cultural status, or other mortal acquirements. The psychic and spiritual
concomitants of the prayer of faith are immediate, personal, and experiential.
There is no other technique whereby every man, regardless of all other mortal
accomplishments, can so effectively and immediately approach the threshold of
that realm wherein he can communicate with his Maker, where the creature
contacts with the reality of the Creator, with the indwelling Thought
Adjuster.

7. MYSTICISM, ECSTASY, AND INSPIRATION

91:7.1 Mysticism, as the technique of the
cultivation of the consciousness of the presence of God, is altogether
praiseworthy, but when such practices lead to social isolation and culminate
in religious fanaticism, they are all but reprehensible. Altogether too
frequently that which the overwrought mystic evaluates as divine inspiration
is the uprisings of his own deep mind. The contact of the mortal mind with its
indwelling Adjuster, while often favored by devoted meditation, is more
frequently facilitated by wholehearted and loving service in unselfish
ministry to one's fellow creatures.

91:7.2 The great religious teachers and the prophets
of past ages were not extreme mystics. They were God-knowing men and women who
best served their God by unselfish ministry to their fellow mortals. Jesus
often took his apostles away by themselves for short periods to engage in
meditation and prayer, but for the most part he kept them in service-contact
with the multitudes. The soul of man requires spiritual exercise as well as
spiritual nourishment.

91:7.3 Religious ecstasy is permissible when
resulting from sane antecedents, but such experiences are more often the
outgrowth of purely emotional influences than a manifestation of deep
spiritual character. Religious persons must not regard every vivid psychologic
presentiment and every intense emotional experience as a divine revelation or
a spiritual communication. Genuine spiritual ecstasy is usually associated
with great outward calmness and almost perfect emotional control. But true
prophetic vision is a superpsychologic presentiment. Such visitations are not
pseudo hallucinations, neither are they trancelike ecstasies.

91:7.4 The human mind may perform in response to
so-called inspiration when it is sensitive either to the uprisings of the
subconscious or to the stimulus of the superconscious. In either case it
appears to the individual that such augmentations of the content of
consciousness are more or less foreign. Unrestrained mystical enthusiasm and
rampant religious ecstasy are not the credentials of inspiration, supposedly
divine credentials.

91:7.5 The practical test of all these strange
religious experiences of mysticism, ecstasy, and inspiration is to observe
whether these phenomena cause an individual:

1. To enjoy better and more complete physical
health.

2. To function more efficiently and practically in
his mental life.

3. More fully and joyfully to socialize his
religious experience.

4. More completely to spiritualize his day-by-day
living while faithfully discharging the commonplace duties of routine mortal
existence.

5. To enhance his love for, and appreciation of,
truth, beauty, and goodness.

91:7.6 But prayer has no real association with these
exceptional religious experiences. When prayer becomes overmuch aesthetic,
when it consists almost exclusively in beautiful and blissful contemplation of
paradisiacal divinity, it loses much of its socializing influence and tends
toward mysticism and the isolation of its devotees. There is a certain danger
associated with overmuch private praying which is corrected and prevented by
group praying, community devotions.

8. PRAYING AS A PERSONAL EXPERIENCE

91:8.1 There is a truly spontaneous aspect to
prayer, for primitive man found himself praying long before he had any clear
concept of a God. Early man was wont to pray in two diverse situations: When
in dire need, he experienced the impulse to reach out for help; and when
jubilant, he indulged the impulsive expression of joy.

91:8.2 Prayer is not an evolution of magic; they
each arose independently. Magic was an attempt to adjust Deity to conditions;
prayer is the effort to adjust the personality to the will of Deity. True
prayer is both moral and religious; magic is neither.

91:8.3 Prayer may become an established custom; many
pray because others do. Still others pray because they fear something direful
may happen if they do not offer their regular supplications.

91:8.4 To some individuals prayer is the calm
expression of gratitude; to others, a group expression of praise, social
devotions; sometimes it is the imitation of another's religion, while in true
praying it is the sincere and trusting communication of the spiritual nature
of the creature with the anywhere presence of the spirit of the
Creator.

91:8.5 Prayer may be a spontaneous expression of
God-consciousness or a meaningless recitation of theologic formulas. It may be
the ecstatic praise of a God-knowing soul or the slavish obeisance of a
fear-ridden mortal. It is sometimes the pathetic expression of spiritual
craving and sometimes the blatant shouting of pious phrases. Prayer may be
joyous praise or a humble plea for forgiveness.

91:8.6 Prayer may be the childlike plea for the
impossible or the mature entreaty for moral growth and spiritual power. A
petition may be for daily bread or may embody a wholehearted yearning to find
God and to do his will. It may be a wholly selfish request or a true and
magnificent gesture toward the realization of unselfish
brotherhood.

91:8.7 Prayer may be an angry cry for vengeance or a
merciful intercession for one's enemies. It may be the expression of a hope of
changing God or the powerful technique of changing one's self. It may be the
cringing plea of a lost sinner before a supposedly stern Judge or the joyful
expression of a liberated son of the living and merciful heavenly Father.

91:8.8 Modern man is perplexed by the thought of
talking things over with God in a purely personal way. Many have abandoned
regular praying; they only pray when under unusual pressure -- in emergencies.
Man should be unafraid to talk to God, but only a spiritual child would
undertake to persuade, or presume to change, God.

91:8.9 But real praying does attain reality. Even
when the air currents are ascending, no bird can soar except by outstretched
wings. Prayer elevates man because it is a technique of progressing by the
utilization of the ascending spiritual currents of the universe.

91:8.10 Genuine prayer adds to spiritual growth,
modifies attitudes, and yields that satisfaction which comes from communion
with divinity. It is a spontaneous outburst of God-consciousness.

91:8.11 God answers man's prayer by giving him an
increased revelation of truth, an enhanced appreciation of beauty, and an
augmented concept of goodness. Prayer is a subjective gesture, but it contacts
with mighty objective realities on the spiritual levels of human experience;
it is a meaningful reach by the human for superhuman values. It is the most
potent spiritual-growth stimulus.

91:8.12 Words are irrelevant to prayer; they are
merely the intellectual channel in which the river of spiritual supplication
may chance to flow. The word value of a prayer is purely autosuggestive in
private devotions and sociosuggestive in group devotions. God answers the
soul's attitude, not the words.

91:8.13 Prayer is not a technique of escape from
conflict but rather a stimulus to growth in the very face of conflict. Pray
only for values, not things; for growth, not for gratification.

9. CONDITIONS OF EFFECTIVE PRAYER

91:9.1 If you would engage in effective praying, you
should bear in mind the laws of prevailing petitions:

91:9.2 1. You must qualify as a potent prayer by
sincerely and courageously facing the problems of universe reality. You must
possess cosmic stamina.

91:9.3 2. You must have honestly exhausted the human
capacity for human adjustment. You must have been industrious.

91:9.4 3. You must surrender every wish of mind and
every craving of soul to the transforming embrace of spiritual growth. You
must have experienced an enhancement of meanings and an elevation of values.

91:9.5 4. You must make a wholehearted choice of the
divine will. You must obliterate the dead center of indecision.

91:9.6 5. You not only recognize the Father's will
and choose to do it, but you have effected an unqualified consecration, and a
dynamic dedication, to the actual doing of the Father's will.

91:9.7 6. Your prayer will be directed exclusively
for divine wisdom to solve the specific human problems encountered in the
Paradise ascension -- the attainment of divine perfection.